FROM JOHN HANSON FOLLOWING OUR RECENT SUCCESFUL QUEST FOR ORANGE TIPS AT HUDDISFORD

ON THE TRACK OF UNKNOWN...

Yesterday Graham and I went in search of an animal not seen in our part of North Devon for over thirty years. Like so many cryptozoological creatures, it is ethno-known, and our search was triggered by a chance encounter that a visiting fortean had with one of these animals.

Graham and I finally ran it down after an exciting car chase down twisting lanes, and we have conclusive proof of its existence.

I lived in Woolsery between 1971 and 1981, and most springtimes I would get on my bicycle and go up to the edges of Huddisford Woods (yes; the place where we got the big cat hairs last year), and look at the orange tips.

Anthocharis cardamines is one of my favourite British butterflies, probably because it reminds me of my favourite butterfly from my childhood in Hong Kong. However, for some reason or another, they were never common in Woolsery, and began to die out in about 1977, and by the beginning of the decade that taste forgot, they had vanished.

At the weekend Dawn Holloway of the Haunted Skies Project told me how common they were this year in her back garden in Redditch, and I bemoaned the fact that I had not seen them in Woolsery for many a year. I even told her that each year I drove up to the borders of Huddisford Wood looking for them, to no avail.

The next day (with a slightly `I told you so` look in her eyes LOL) she told me that there were plenty of them along the lane from the campsite at Ashcroft Farm to Huddisford. So today Graham and I went looking for them, and we saw five or six males. We followed one along one of the lanes, and were surprised to see it travel for over half a mile without any seeming signs of exhaustion.

We later saw another three males at another location (Kennerland Cross) where I had never seen them before. The species is certainly back, and in some numbers. We shall be going back there tomorrow to see if we can ascertain how many of the `white` butterflies that we also saw were this species rather than green-veined, large, or small whites (P.napi, P brassica, and P.rapae). Watch this space....

A FOSSIL, BUT OF WHAT?

John and Dawn from the Haunted Skies project were down last weekend working on Volume Two. On Saturday morning they went for a walk along Bucks Mills beach and found this.



They (and Jon) presume that it is a fossil, but of what?



Ideas please....

EDITORIAL BOOZE-FEST 2

THIS pint is also a Phoenix Breweries one; it's called a Double Gold, and I have to say, it's rather delicious, hence my inability to wait till after the photo before drinking it.

On the blog today:

More yokai from Richard F, a new addition to the CFZ menagerie, the RSPB tantalise Jonboy, we have a new guest blogger, and the ufologists wonder what on earth created the pattern at Bucks Mills. Enjoy....

BABY PIGEON IN UFO FOLKS' GARDEN

Baby pigeons are the most ridiculously unprepossessing animals. They also emit the most peculiar wheezing noise, and one memorable year my ex-wife had (I think) eight of them in various stages of fledgedness after she had rescued them.



This young fellow was photographed by John and Dawn of the Haunted Skies project, just prior to its maiden flight from a tree in the garden of their house in the West Midlands.

BABY HEDGEHOG EATING A SAUSAGE

I get a gloriously disparate collection of photographs sent to me by various members of the CFZ family. These were sent by John and Dawn of the Haunted Skies Project and show a baby hedgehog showing a very unhoglike preference in foodstuffs. The photographs were taken at Exhall, Warwickshire, near a cricket club known locally as 'Titties Hill' (This is the real name not a joke). A joke Mr Hanson? Non Comprende Senor...
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ELLO ELLO ELLO, WHAT 'AVE WE 'ERE THEN?

Yesterday I noted that Haunted Skies Volume 1 by ex-police officer John Hanson and his long-suffering partner Dawn Holloway is now available in the USA.


I forgot to say that they are down here for the weekend working on Vol 2, and I am making as many policeman jokes as I can manage before he stitches me up like a kipper, my son.

WEIRD WEEKEND 2010: Latest News

* I am very pleased to announce that John Hanson and Dawn Hollaway, authors of the new multi-part series Haunted Skies, will be presenting a display of a small portion of the last fifteen years' worth of data, and discussing the project with anyone who is interested....

With less than two weeks to go, now might be a good time to buy your tickets to the best crypto-fortean event of the year....

Buy Your Tickets here

LONG EARED BAT ROADKILL

This long-eared bat was unfortunate enough to fly into the windscreen of John and Dawn's (authors of the new Encyclopaedia of British UFOs) car. Sadly, it did not survive, but it is an extraordinary picture....